creative. barely.

Category Archives: Humor

There wasn’t wifi on my flights to New York so, instead of being able to update my travel status real-time through social media, I decided to keep a running log of all the things I would have said if I were able to post updates, along with other thoughts and observations.

These posts pick up after I landed in Denver to change planes.

*Status updates I would have made are denoted by quotations.

8:25am PST “Denver is such an oddly designed airport. I get the whole ‘tribute to the Rockies’ thing, but it still looks weird to me.”

8:26am PST I did manage the following post on twitter, “ Haven’t been here since the infamous #Denver incident.” Don’t expect me to tell that story publicly. You are welcome to ask if we know each other in person, or ask me via privately.

There wasn’t wifi on my flights to New York so, instead of being able to update my travel status real-time through social media, I decided to keep a running log of all the things I would have said if I were able to post updates, along with other thoughts and observations. Here they are.

6:36am PST “Goodbye Spokane” I even took pictures with my phone. While it was on airplane mode. Speaking of which, when are we going to get over this whole turning off electronic devices while taking off? Did they make people turn off their Disc-Mans 15 years ago? Disc-Man, haha.

Edit: My wife told me that, yes, they did make people turn off their Disc-Mans. So weird.

Every once in awhile I chat with a client, an associate, or a friend who has a story about bad customer service. But not of the normal variety. The situations that stand out to me are when a customer is trying to do business with a company that seemingly doesn’t want the business. It’s happened to me on several occasions as well. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why a business wouldn’t want a new customer. If their workload is too heavy and they don’t need me as a customer, the least they could do is tell me, right? It comes across like they hate money. But what I really mean is, it comes across like they hate their customers.

On that note, I’ve put together a quick list of things to do if you never want to make a sale:

1. Don’t return phone calls or emails from people who WANT to buy your product/service right now.

2. In fact, don’t ever respond to any email or answer any phone call.

3. Say you’ll do something and then don’t do it.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest. Let’s talk about the positive.

Things you should do NO MATTER WHAT to sell your product/service:

1. Sometimes it’s improbable to answer every single email and respond to every single phone call in a day, and I get that. So, layout a plan for responding. It could be phone calls are responded to same day, and emails are responded to in 12 hours.

2. This next one is so simple it’s scarey. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you aren’t going to be able to do what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it, then say so. Honesty is awesome.

3. Which brings me to this. Be honest with your customers. It won’t hurt you, and it certainly won’t hurt them.

As you’ve probably noticed, these things have less to do with actually making money, and more to do with taking care of your customers. If you take care of your customers, I promise they’ll take care of you.

I don’t tweet and I rarely Facebook over the weekend. That’s because I’m too busy doing life to share it. I’m not being an elitist or anything. It’s just a fact. Like plenty of other people, I save my social media interaction for when I’m at work. The difference is, I get paid to be online and monitoring social sites. Most other people don’t.

The point is, and I’m just throwing this out there, a lot of people aren’t online over the weekend. Those who are may have more time to comment or like or whatever, but that doesn’t mean more people are online. Research seems to prove that engagement is higher over the weekend. But as I write this, at 10am on a Monday, over 30 people are logged into Facebook chat, and the people I’m following on twitter have tweeted over a dozen times in less than 5 minutes.

And I’m not a genius for discovering this, but it’s true. You hear the phrase “common sense” as if it’s something you should find in people more often than not. I’m here to tell you, the opposite might be more true.

This website exists for a reason. Maybe it should be called Common Fail instead.

Anyway, I don’t want to just rant but seriously, let’s find some common sense.

I thought this article was pretty interesting. To summarize, a study was done on the effects of alcohol on memory and creativity. It was shown that those who had a .0075 BAC answered more correct questions and did so more quickly than those who weren’t drinking at all.

The study proved that alcohol frees up creative memory, but not working memory. Subjects were able to think creatively, but struggled to remember what had been done after. According to the study, alcohol improves creative memory by decreasing working memory. Working memory is defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension

Obviously, alcohol is an issue when abused, and for some it’s an addiction. That said, maybe your company could stand to have a few “creative” Friday afternoon meetings. Brainstorm after a few cocktails (while staying under the legal limit of course) and see what ideas you come up with and what problems you solve.

I think the Post Office should go in a different direction. Instead of closing branches, reducing days of operation, and activating layoffs, they should increase hours and days of operation, hire more employees, and open satellite branches.

First, the Post Office should deliver mail on Sunday. Who else does that? No one. Offer something no other delivery service offers. Think about the online implications with sites like Amazon. The world runs 24 hours a day (except in Spokane). Be the first delivery service to do the same.

Next, hire more employees and mandate customer service training. When was the last time you had a good experience at the Post Office? They should act as if they actually want your business. Instead, they seem pissed at you, as if you ruined their day just getting in line. Conversely, when was the last time you had a bad experience at a Costco? Exactly. Never.

Finally, increase locations by offering satellite branches, and then have them open earlier and stay open later. Think 6am – 10pm. Does the UPS Store do that? Nope.

Instead of reducing the effectiveness of an already outdated business model, shoot the moon and do something no one else does. You’re already losing money. Spend money and become something more. Become indispensable and irreplaceable. Boom.

I try to be up to speed on social networking. Sometimes, I even present a seminar or speak at a conference. But I’m not an expert. Know why? Because the second I say I’m an expert, Facebook will make a monumental change overnight (Timeline) and if I didn’t know about it or I don’t know everything about it, I get egg on my face. That said, I know more about social media than the average bear.